News Archive for February 4, 2011

Every football team that makes it to the Super Bowl has a fight song. This year, for the first time ever, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will be singing the same tune, if not from the same song sheet.

A tattoo seemed like a good idea at the time, but now you want it gone. Home tattoo-removal products are being marketed as effective ways to fade unwanted tattoos at a fraction of the cost of laser removal. Doctors say home methods at best ...

Since late January, antigovernment demonstrators have swarmed the streets of Cairo, calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down and at times clashing with the president's supporters. Much of the action has centered on Tahrir ...

We won't predict the winner of this Sunday's Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers. But we can report this much: The Steelers will get to keep a lot more of their season earnings, though both team's ...

DALLAS – New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was doing an interview here on Radio Row on Thursday ahead of the Super Bowl. In the interview, Mr. Manning touched on a wide variety of topics, from his opinion on cold weather football ...

MANAMA, Bahrain--Hundreds of Bahrainis gathered in front of the Egyptian embassy in the capital Manama on Friday, in a rally organized in solidarity with Egypt's pro-democracy movement that also lent a voice to Bahrain's own ...

NEW YORK—If interest rates hold firm and the economy keeps plodding along in a slow recovery, that would be just fine for those behind an unusual options trade on an exchange-traded fund tied to the dollar.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor drew attention to her racial politics this week during a speech at the University of Chicago Law School, where she took issue with the positions of some of her colleagues on the bench.

Q. I'd like to buy a home this spring, and would prefer a new one over a resale. But in the neighborhoods I am interested in, new home prices seem to be going up, while resale homes still seem to be losing value. Why is that, and what, ...

The Patriot Act, one of most prominent expansions of federal authority in the past decade, received overwhelming Republican backing in 2006 when it was first up for renewal. This year, even as the surge of the tea party brought to ...

BUDAPEST—Hungary criticized the International Monetary Fund for what it called the fund's allegedly ignorant and misleading assessment of Hungary, and it called on the IMF "to exercise self-criticism" and publicly acknowledge ...

OTTAWA—Canada's employment kicked off the year on a scorching note as the economy churned out about 4.5 times more new jobs than expected, the most since April 2010, but the unemployment rate rose unexpectedly as the number of people ...

NEW YORK—Popular Inc., one of the winners in the regulator-driven consolidation of the banking industry in Puerto Rico last year, on Friday reported a wider fourth-quarter loss, as it set aside more funds to cover potential loan losses and ...

LONDON —U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's government clashed with the opposition Labour party over economic policy Friday as it sought to face down criticism that ministers had no plan to propel the recovery.

DUBLIN—Ireland's main opposition party Fine Gael on Friday said the next government would be forced to "unilaterally" restructure the debt of Irish banks if agreement cannot be reached with Europe on senior bond holders ...

NEW YORK—J.P. Morgan Chase potentially faces reputational damage, and maybe even more legal woes, from allegations leveled in a lawsuit by the trustee seeking to recoup losses for Bernard Madoff's victims.

Shumway Capital Partners, a hedge fund with more than $8 billion under management, is planning to return all of its external capital to investors by the end of the first quarter, its founder said in a letter to investors on Friday.

STOCKHOLM—Sweden's truck makers, which shed workers and curbed capacity during the economic downturn as sales dwindled, are encountering problems as they ramp up production now that demand has returned.

HOUSTON—Astronaut Mark Kelly, who has been on personal leave since his wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was critically wounded in a Jan. 8 shooting rampage, will resume training for a space mission, NASA confirmed Friday.

STOCKHOLM—The Swedish center-right government raised 19 billion kronor ($2.94 billion) by selling part of its holding in Nordea Bank AB in its first post-re-election sale of state-owned corporate assets.

Weyerhaeuser Co. posted a fourth-quarter profit as the timber-products company's revenue and margins improved. Earnings came to $171 million, or 32 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $175 million, or 83 cents a share. ...

SAO PAULO--At least eight northeastern Brazilian states lost power Thursday night after problems at an electric substation knocked out transmission lines and temporarily shut down generation capacity, disrupting air travel for a few hours ...

NEW DELHI –A retired judge examining the allocation of telecom licenses and bandwidth by India's Department of Telecommunications from 2001 to 2009 has said all procedures adopted since 2003 were "wrong," including the ...

MUMBAI – Indian shares broke a two-day positive run to close sharply lower Friday, as nervous investors used recent gains to take profits, especially in large-cap stocks such as Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank.

ZURICH—Switzerland's Actelion Ltd. shrugged off criticism from investor Elliott Advisors Ltd, saying it is backing its chairman and chief executive and will remain independent as Europe's largest biotech firm has received no ...

A typical working day at a small airstrip just outside London and you park your car right outside the tiny terminal building. Once inside, a receptionist offers fresh coffee and croissants as your pilots greet you, take your bag and escort ...

MOSCOW—Russia's largest oil producer, OAO Rosneft Friday said fourth-quarter net profit rose 83% from a year earlier on higher oil prices and greater crude oil production, but the results were overshadowed by reports it may buy into ...

It's time to cut your tax bill. As we draw to the end of the financial year, which comes to a close on March 31, consider scanning your investments and expenditures to see which ones can be deducted from your income tax.

BRUSSELS—Broadcasters of English Premier League soccer and other big-ticket sports and entertainment events could soon be barred from carving up the European Union into differently priced national markets, according to a preliminary opinion ...

LONDON—U.K. house prices posted a surprise gain in January compared with December, mortgage lender Halifax said Friday, attributing the rise to a monthly fluctuation rather than a significant change in market conditions.

SYDNEY—PTT Exploration & Production PLC has satisfactorily responded to issues raised by Australian lawmakers following the Montara oil spill, and won't have its oil licences revoked, Australia's Energy Minister Martin ...

TOKYO—Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. said Friday that it returned to profitability in the April-December period as growth in overseas vehicle sales offset the impact of the yen's strength, causing it to raise its full-year projections.

Fed Chairman Bernanke rejected complaints by China and other developing economies that U.S. policies are driving up global food and energy prices, and instead pinned the blame on accelerating growth in emerging markets and their inadequate ...

House GOP leaders took an opening budget-battle shot. Republican leaders proposed cutting more than $30 billion from net government spending the rest of this fiscal year, but would boost defense outlays 1%—challenging Obama's argument ...

Most Asian markets advanced Friday in light holiday trading, with Japanese stocks buoyed by a proposed merger between Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries and an upbeat profit forecast from Softbank Corp.

You can take all kinds of sightseeing tours in New York City—cast iron architecture, celebrity apartments buildings, Central Park birds. But the Midtown mythology tour I joined on an otherwise dreary Wednesday afternoon may have constituted ...

Marla Maples wants to change the world, one song at a time. The performer and actress first known as Donald Trump's second wife plans to donate 20% of the proceeds from the title song on her EP "One World of Love" to Success ...

Less than a month after the shooting of his wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, astronaut Mark Kelly is strongly leaning toward resuming training and, barring last-minute changes, serving as commander of a space shuttle flight ...

NEWARK, N.J.—No one wanted Brian Rolston anymore. What other conclusion was there for him to draw? The New Jersey Devils placed him on waivers on Dec. 14. No one claimed him. The Devils assigned him to Albany, their American Hockey League ...

Yankee fans hoped all winter that a few weeks before spring training, Andy Pettitte would announce that he just couldn't stay away, that he knew the Yankees needed him to return and help lead them to another World Series.

ROME—Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on Thursday passed measures to decentralize Italy's public spending, in a bid to shore up support within the premier's conservative coalition and stave off early elections.

Bump in the road, or grinding halt? Royal Dutch Shell is confident its $4.1 billion fourth-quarter earnings will prove the former despite falling 13% below expectations, which it blamed on poor performance in its refining business. That ...

AMMAN-—Jordan's King Abdullah II met with members of the country's Islamist movement Thursday, the first such meeting in nearly a decade, and assured them he is serious about fighting corruption and introducing political reforms.

NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith (pictured) was clear in his Super Bowl week press conference Thursday: An 18-game season is not in the best interest of players and a dealbreaker for the union. "Anything that ...

Knicks team president Donnie Walsh said Thursday that he would like to finish what he started with the Knicks—but he hasn't given much thought to his soon-to-expire contract. The deadline for the Knicks to pick up the option in Mr. ...

Madison Square Garden has seen its share of reunion shows over the years: the Jackson 5, the Police, Clapton and Winwood. (What, you forgot about Blind Faith?) The Rangers tried to put on their own Thursday night; they came as close to ...

BUENOS AIRES—Argentina's relations with the U.S. hit a new bump as President Cristina Kirchner's foreign minister suggested that a U.S.-sponsored police-training program was teaching oppressive tactics to members of the Buenos ...

Filmmaker Charles Sellier determined precisely what audiences wanted, then delivered it to them. Mr. Sellier, 67 years old, who died suddenly on Monday, was an independent operator who created more than 1,000 productions ranging from ...

The New York Philharmonic made a flurry of announcements about its 2011-12 season on Thursday. While music director Alan Gilbert continues to emphasize taking the orchestra into the future, he has also invited three of the company's ...

Joey DeFrancesco Trio Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Broadway at 60th Street, (212) 258-9595 Through Sunday Organist Joey DeFrancesco is a funky giant, both of a man and of a talent: When he takes his position at the Hammond B3, he totally ...

WASHINGTON—House Republican leaders on Thursday proposed cutting more than $30 billion from government spending for the remaining eight months of the fiscal year. Their approach could mean big reductions for virtually all federal agencies ...

LISBON—Portugal's prime minister said he supported a German-led push to make coordinated economic reforms across the euro zone in exchange for the enlargement of the bloc's rescue package—but he insisted that pushing his country ...

DUBAI—Investors have said that they may hesitate before committing new money to the Middle East, including oil-rich Gulf Arab states, as a result of the political turmoil spreading across the region. However, the largest effect is likely to ...

The shuttering of more than a dozen stores along Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, Queens, has many locals and business owners on edge over the future of an area considered one of the most desirable residential neighborhoods in the borough.

LONDON—Algeria is to lift a state of emergency in force since the 1990s civil war, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said Thursday, throwing a key concession to the opposition as it responds to unrest at home and in the rest of the Arab world.

Hundreds of protesters descended on Brooklyn Thursday, laying bare the deep philosophical divide that has become central to the Bloomberg administration's education policy: whether the city should fix failing schools or shut them down.

TUNIS—From an obscure office on an empty floor of a former bank, Taoufik Bouderbala is working to bring to justice those responsible for the killing of 219 Tunisian protesters, by the United Nation's count, during the country's ...

SYDNEY -- The Reserve Bank of Australia said Friday it will "look through" the effects on the economy of catastrophic floods in December and January, keeping policy focused on the medium-term job of containing a mining boom and a ...

A year ago, in what seemed like a supreme irony, the Mortgage Bankers Association sold its Washington, D.C., headquarters at a big loss. On Thursday, insult was added to injury: The building's buyer has flipped it for a big profit.

CAIRO—Ashraf Hatem, the director of the country's largest hospital here, had thought early Thursday morning that another chaotic day had finally come to an end. That night's violence yielded the hospital another 160 patients, ...

Last summer when Robert Newton opened Seersucker, a charming neighborhood spot in Carroll Gardens, he set out to give a lighter, fresher take on Southern cuisine. "Part of it just happens organically," said the chef. "You use ...

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has reached a $6.6 billion settlement with creditors for its second-largest foreign affiliate, German-based Lehman Brothers Bankhaus AG, according to a person close to Lehman.

NEW YORK—The dollar gained sharply against the euro Thursday after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet threw cold water on the idea the central bank would soon embark on the path of increasing key rates.

NEW YORK—BJ's Wholesale Club got record options volume as takeover hopes heated up. BJ's said it has hired Morgan Stanley to advise it on strategic options, which could include a possible sale. The announcement comes seven months ...

MADRID—Banco Santander SA's net profit fell 4.6% in the fourth quarter as lower income from Europe offset strong growth in the Americas, but the Spanish lender indicated it would make a healthy profit this year.

FRANKFURT—Deutsche Bank AG said it is hunting for acquisitions in commodities trading, joining the scramble among investment banks to take advantage of the boom in raw-material prices as fixed-income trading cools.

Turmoil in Egypt Government officials took a number of steps aimed at addressing grievances long held by the regime's opponents, as protesters solidified their position in central Cairo's Tahrir Square. Health Minister Ahmed Samih ...

Fans might be putting a few bucks on the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers for this weekend, but the true high-stakes gamblers are betting $2.8 million to $3 million on 30-second ads they hope will pay off with high ratings.

NEW YORK—Four consultants and two former employees of an "expert networking" firm have been sued for allegedly improperly tipping hedge funds and other investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.

Settlement negotiations broke down Thursday between lawyers for Mets owner Fred Wilpon and the trustee who sued him in December to recover funds for Madoff victims, and it became increasingly likely that the trustee's lawsuit against ...

Snowstorms didn't deter shoppers in January, as consumers braved the elements and showed a continued willingness to spend. But retailers' enthusiasm is being tempered by higher costs, which work against them in multiple ways: ...

BEIJING—Fireworks ignited a blaze that gutted much of a hotel tower in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, the second time in two years that the country's Lunar New Year tradition of pyrotechnics has claimed a major building.

BEIJING—The maker of China's new stealth fighter jet has teamed up with a tiny, unprofitable California company to try to launch bids for U.S. defense contracts, possibly including one to supply Chinese helicopters to replace the aging ...

Mexican authorities Thursday began an investigation into the killing of a retired Mexican general who was shot dead in Nuevo Laredo barely a month after taking a job as police chief of the violent border town.

Curtis Martin carried a football 3,518 times in his NFL career and a great personal narrative throughout most of his life. A Pittsburgh native, he began playing football as a senior at Allderdice High School at his mother's request; she ...

Billboards and posters are one of world's oldest forms of advertising. Now, some marketers and start-ups say wireless technology could revamp outdoor advertising by bringing interactivity and pay-for-performance models.

ZURICH—UBS AG will delay payment of bonuses after executives expressed concerns that the pending payouts would be inadequate to retain the top talent it has been hiring to rebuild its investment bank, according to a person familiar with the ...

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ignored or dismissed warning signs about the Madoff fraud even as it earned hundreds of millions of dollars from its relationship with his firm, according to a lawsuit unsealed Thursday.

NEW YORK—The trustee seeking to recover money on behalf of victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud and lawyers for the New York Mets owners have asked a federal bankruptcy judge to unseal a lawsuit after negotiations to settle the case broke ...

The newly minted chief executives of two of the world's biggest drug makers sketched out sharply divergent strategies for reviving their businesses this week, setting up a showdown over which is the better strategy for the ...

Viacom Inc. saw a 12% decline in earnings for the quarter ended Dec. 31, as a steep drop in its home-video results dragged down growth at cable networks and big box-office receipts for theatrical movies.

A new messaging service aims to keep your secrets safe. TigerText Inc., which can send texts that vanish from both the sender and receiver's phone after a select period of time so they can't be copied or forwarded, has developed a ...

FRANKFURT—Spanish construction company Actividades de Construcción y Servicios SA said Thursday it succeeded in the first stage of its planned takeover of Hochtief AG of Germany, clearing the way for one of the largest hostile deals in ...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's attempt to abruptly push aside Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in favor of a transition government has sparked a rift with key Arab allies Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, which fear the U.S. ...

The race for new ways to measure the impact of television commercials is heating up. TiVo Inc. is expanding its service that allows advertisers to see how many and what kind of users are viewing their commercials. The company this week ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke rejected complaints by China and other developing economies that U.S. policies are driving up global food and energy prices, and instead pinned the blame on accelerating growth in emerging markets and ...

Hovering like a dark cloud over the demonstrations in Egypt is the memory of the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. For critics of the Bush Administration, those elections, in which Hamas scored an unanticipated win, were proof that ...

In the glass-houses department, Henry Waxman is accusing Republicans of "an abuse of the oversight process" and "going on fishing expeditions" as they investigate the White House. This is like Ben Roethlisberger ...

Senator Jeff Sessions offered us his take on free trade Thursday. "We're at a point in time in America that we can't resolve every trade agreement in favor of our competitors," the Republican told us. "At some point ...

PORT-AU-PRINCE—A former Haitian first lady will face off against a pop singer in a March runoff election that will determine this earthquake-devastated country's next president, Haiti's electoral council said Thursday in a ...

SAN'A, Yemen—Tens of thousands of opposition supporters flooded streets across several blocks of the Yemeni capital Thursday, with protest leaders demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh make good on promises of political and economic ...

LONGVIEW, Wash.—A battle over a proposed coal export terminal on the Columbia River has taken on a global dimension, as opponents say local officials have to consider the potential environmental harm when the U.S. fuel is burned at its ...

Sunday's professional football game in North Texas will mark the 45th time two teams have met to determine the Super Bowl champion. But this game is a bit different. This time, the two teams involved are the agents of a revolution.

The Egyptian government ratcheted up its offensive against opponents to President Hosni Mubarak's continued rule and security forces moved to stifle foreign reporting, as international fault lines formed over the U.S. push for Mr. ...

CAIRO — Foreign journalists remain under attack by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak for a second day since the groups took to the streets to clash with protesters seeking the end of the president's rule. Several journalists have ...

No one could blame Jeff Bewkes if, right about now, he was wondering what he needed to do to earn some respect. Since becoming chief executive of Time Warner in early 2008, Mr. Bewkes has decisively streamlined the entertainment company, ...

Verizon Wireless warned it will slow down the data connection of its most-active users when its network is stressed, a new policy that comes as the company prepares to add Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4 to its network.

"I'm shivvverrrrring—this is ridddiiccccullllous," Donald Driver said, teeth chattering. It was the Media Day frolic for Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium, and the 36-year-old Green Bay Packers wide receiver was hunched in a ...

Mark this date: On Feb. 2, 2011, a Democratic Senate killed the first piece of the health-care law it passed less than a year ago. Bowing (finally) to reality, 34 Democrats rushed to be among the 81 senators who axed the bill's odious ...

NEW YORK—A former WexTrust Capital LLC executive pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal charges in a Ponzi scheme that prosecutors have said defrauded investors out of more than $200 million, many of them Orthodox Jews.

Chocolate lovers are a rare group willing to pay up for their fix. Hershey stock is up 8% since Wednesday, when it topped fourth-quarter earnings estimates thanks to higher volume and prices. That distinguishes it from other food companies ...

The cavernous Great Hall at the Brooklyn Museum isn't the most probable place for an intimate experience. But that's just what a new architectural installation hopes to change—at least for the next 10 months.

Worries about food and raw-materials supply are mounting, but there's definitely no shortage of one thing: ships to ferry them around. The Baltic Dry Index tracks the cost of shipping things like coal, grain and iron ore (not oil). It ...

The Obama administration, like much of the world, is not reacting to the situation in Egypt—a mostly rural country populated mainly by poor peasants. It is reacting to the media spectacle in the center of Cairo, in which huge but largely ...

Deutsche Bank gained a reputation during the financial crisis for deftly handling its numbers—a skill it clearly hasn't lost. The German bank glided through a potentially tricky profit warning this week by persuading investors that a ...

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. currency traders used a foreign-exchange system called "Charlie" to create fake trades and overcharge Virginia pension funds by at least $20 million, according to allegations in recently unsealed ...

This winter's long string of powerful storms is adding pressure to already strained local government budgets. Several big cities, including New York and Kansas City, Mo., have already exhausted their snow-removal budgets and are ...

Are we witnessing the death of America's Christian denominations? Studies conducted by secular and Christian organizations indicate that we are. Fewer and fewer American Christians, especially Protestants, strongly identify with a ...

A unit of French insurer AXA SA agreed to pay $242 million to settle fraud accusations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it hid from clients for nearly a year a serious software glitch in a quantitative investment model.

Behind this week's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson overturning ObamaCare on constitutional grounds, there is a deeper economic reality. The states can't afford it. That's a primary reason why 26 states joined ...

After more than a decade of experimentation, auto insurer Progressive Corp. is on the verge of a nationwide unveiling of a new type of insurance that charges customers based, in part, on real-time information about how well they drive.

During my nine years in the White House, I had the good fortune to work for three presidents—Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and, for the last four, Ronald Reagan, whom I served as national security adviser. The stewardship of these three men ...

John Heilemann, co-author of the 2008 campaign book "Game Change," writing in New York magazine, Jan. 23: [President Obama] rarely consulted outside the tiny charmed circle surrounding him in the White House. "What you had was ...

On the opening page of "The Fair Trade Revolution," editor John Bowes relates an anecdote about Kuapa Kokoo, a Ghanaian cooperative where some of the world's best cocoa originates. In 2000, a visiting BBC crew gave a ...

John Taylor Skilling, the 20-year-old son of former Enron Corp. president Jeffrey Skilling, was found dead earlier this week in his apartment in Santa Ana, Calif. Authorities said the cause of death isn't yet known but there ...

How do renowned chefs get their message across? The most straightforward way is for their skills in the kitchen to be publicized by critics, books or, more often nowadays, in a television series. Then there are the lucrative consultancy ...

Two cheers for Hernán Cortés. He may have bullied Montezuma and victimized the Aztecs, but he gave the rest of us chocolate. First cultivated by the Olmec Indians more than 1,000 years ago, the beans of the cocoa plant were used by the ...

Full disclosure, readers, before I begin this column: I used to sit on the board of Rambert, which is unquestionably Britain's leading contemporary dance company and about which I'm going to wax lyrical.

The father of "sword- and- sorcery" fiction was Robert E. Howard (1906–36), an unlikely creator for such a wide-ranging and adventurous form. He lived all his short life in small-town Texas and shot himself at age 30, seemingly ...

Vodafone Group PLC and France Télécom SA, facing heat for complying with the Egyptian government's order to pull the plug on their networks last week, said Thursday that Egypt's government forced its way onto their mobile networks ...

Capricious, fickle, mercurial, sublime, noble, evocative. As a challenge, I could probably fill a whole page with adjectives attempting to describe Pinot Noir and still not get to the nub of red Burgundy.

Benedikt Taschen likes to do things his way, and he has built a publishing empire strictly on that edict alone. Despite having seven offices, 11 stores and 200 employees world-wide, everything still must be run by him before it goes on the ...

Mark Cueto's job is pretty straightforward. As a starting winger for England's rugby union team, he's supposed to catch the ball, hare over the line and then get swamped by a pile of cheering teammates.

'Never pay any attention to what critics say," Jean Sibelius once told a fellow composer. "Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!" The members of my unhallowed profession have, however, been ...

'Sanctum' was produced by James Cameron but not, alas, written or directed by him. The good news about the film has to do with its gorgeous imagery. Just when 3-D was looking like a goose doomed to lay overpriced and mostly rotten ...

Spain currently has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union, but here in the northeast region of Navarre, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, another Spanish superlative comes to mind. With its windy north and sunny south, the ...

The news that another comedy series about a pack of couples is about to hit the TV screen is rarely cause for celebration—as proved yet again by the arrival last month of NBC's deadly "Perfect Couples," a project perfectly ...

New York In Ira Gershwin's lyric for "But Not for Me," a heartsick postmistress declares that love has brought her "more clouds of gray / Than any Russian play / Could guarantee." If I had to guess, I'd say that ...

The start of the European Council summit in Brussels today—the first ever under a Hungarian presidency—presents a real opportunity for my government to make a positive impact on the future direction of the European Union. As always on these ...

Sometimes a document isn't a document—or so the European Commission would have you believe. A decade after introducing the EU's first freedom of information law, the Commission is seeking to have those rules tightened. In the ...

French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) was one of the foremost landscape painters of the 19th century, on par with contemporaries such as English artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and baroque masters such as his compatriot ...

Rare old cars are guaranteed to turn heads in the street—and, at auction. Today and Saturday in Paris, auctions will highlight 20th-century collectors' motor cars staged to run parallel with the ongoing Rétromobile motor show, ...

LONDON—The English National Opera has embarked on a program of trying to entice new audiences into the company's Coliseum by engaging film and theater directors to mount new productions. I was in a critical minority in quite liking ...

LONDON—It's hard to assess Tate Britain's claim that "Susan Hiller (b. 1940) is one of the most influential artists of her generation." In a superficial way, you can trace influences in the titles of some of her work in ...

Amsterdam dance "The Dutch National Ballet: A la Russe" celebrates the work of the three great Russian ballet composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky in a series of performances of choreography by ...

The French chef talks to The Wall Street Journal Europe about how he starts his weekend. Christian Constant is a powerhouse on the Parisian culinary scene. More than a decade ago, he gave up his two Michelin stars at the Hôtel de ...

When Gerard Kleisterlee takes over as chairman of Vodafone Group in July, he seems likely to inherit a business in much better shape than six months ago, when the U.K.-listed telecom company was criticized by a minority shareholder for its ...

When young Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was sent in 1768 to the Pays de la Loire to investigate a rock, the report he sent to the Académie Royale des Sciences poured scorn on the "highly dubious" notion that the triangular stone ...

In 1958, an American graduate student named Stanley Payne made his way from New York's Upper West Side to the French-Spanish border, then crossed into Barcelona by way of Port Bou. The country he found on the other side of the Pyrenees ...

LONDON—It's hard to assess Tate Britain's claim that "Susan Hiller (b. 1940) is one of the most influential artists of her generation." In a superficial way, you can trace influences in the titles of some of her work in ...

Amsterdam dance "The Dutch National Ballet: A la Russe" celebrates the work of the three great Russian ballet composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky in a series of performances of choreography by ...

The French chef talks to The Wall Street Journal Europe about how he starts his weekend. Christian Constant is a powerhouse on the Parisian culinary scene. More than a decade ago, he gave up his two Michelin stars at the Hôtel de ...

When Gerard Kleisterlee takes over as chairman of Vodafone Group in July, he seems likely to inherit a business in much better shape than six months ago, when the U.K.-listed telecom company was criticized by a minority shareholder for its ...

When young Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was sent in 1768 to the Pays de la Loire to investigate a rock, the report he sent to the Académie Royale des Sciences poured scorn on the "highly dubious" notion that the triangular stone ...

In 1958, an American graduate student named Stanley Payne made his way from New York's Upper West Side to the French-Spanish border, then crossed into Barcelona by way of Port Bou. The country he found on the other side of the Pyrenees ...